Thursday, January 31, 2013

Things my brother sent me: burned biscuits

When I was a kid, my mom liked to make breakfast food for dinner every now and then. And I remember one night in particular when she had made breakfast after a long, hard day at work. On that evening so long ago, my mom placed a plate of eggs, sausage and extremely burned biscuits in front of my dad. I remember waiting to see if anyone noticed!

Yet all my dad did was reach for his biscuit, smile at my mom and ask me how my day was at school. I don't remember what I told him that night, but I do remember watching him smear butter and jelly on that ugly burned biscuit. He ate every bite of that thing... never made a face nor uttered a word about it!

When I got up from the table that evening, I remember hearing my mom apologize to my dad for burning the biscuits. And I'll never forget what he said: "Honey, I love burned biscuits every now and then."

Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy good night and I asked him if he really liked his biscuits burned. He wrapped me in his arms and said, "Your Momma put in a hard day at work today and she's real tired. And besides - a little burned biscuit never hurt anyone!"

As I've grown older, I've thought about that many times. Life is full of imperfect things and imperfect people. I'm not the best at anything, and I forget birthdays and anniversaries just like everyone else. But what I've learned over the years is that learning to accept each other's faults, and choosing to celebrate each other’s differences, is one of the most important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship.

And that's my prayer for you today... that you will learn to take the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of your life and lay them at the feet of God. Because in the end, He's the only One who will be able to give you a relationship where a burnt biscuit isn't a deal-breaker!

We could extend this to any relationship. In fact, understanding is the base of any relationship, be it a husband-wife or parent-child or friendship!

The "Semi-Official" news organs.

There was once a time when there were references to the news agencies of dictatorships as "semi-official" because they could be counted on to disseminated the propaganda that these governments wanted to spread.

We regret that we now have the "Semi-official" Obama news media as an apt description of the mainstream media.

The city’s 42nd slaying is part of Chicago’s bloodiest January in more than a decade, following on the heels of 2012, which ended with more than 500 homicides for the first time since 2008. . . .

About three blocks from Hadiya’s school, she and a group of 10-12 young people, including members of her volleyball team, had taken refuge under a canopy at a park to avoid the rain Tuesday afternoon. A man climbed a fence behind the park, ran at the group and started shooting, and then jumped back over the fence and into a white Nissan. The group scattered, but Hadiya was shot once in the back and a teenage boy was shot in the leg.

This is the future of corruption and criminality — “The Chicago Way” — that Obama is bringing to America as a matter of policy.

Forget about al Qaeda, getting murdered in Chicago or being martyred as the ambassador to Libya, the real dangers are cats, showers and Republicans.

The perils that are now detected in Fluffy, or in the shower, or among Republicans in Congress are in stark but perhaps appropriate contrast to the almost unconcerned attitude the administration takes towards terrorism. Dewayne Wickham at USA Today writes that America is now backing a doomed French attempt to prevent al-Qaeda from taking over vast swathes of Africa.

The decline was a “surprise” according to the headline writers, who always seem surprised when anything bad happens in the age of Obama

Even as George Bush is a fading memory, it's still the Republicans' fault ...

White House press secretary Jay Carney helpfully explained that investors were frightened by the appalling spectacle of Republicans in the House of Representatives balking at the president’s prudent plan of massive tax hikes and endless deficit spending during the recent “fiscal cliff” negotiations, and he even blamed the defense cuts on those notoriously anti-military Republicans. The reason the Republicans insist on such shenanigans, Carney further explained, is to make sure that “tax loopholes remain in place for corporate jet owners.”

What's making me very afraid is that the press is swallowing and regurgitating this and that people are actually eating this dog's breakfast.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

You didn't know that Coke was for whites and Pepsi was for Blacks, did you? Is there anything that isn't racist? Is Bloomberg's ban on large soft drinks racist? the NAACP thinks so.

The New York Chapter of the NAACP is now a part of the soft drink industry's lawsuit against the city over the new ban and filed a brief last week that explained why they have a dog in the fight. Recognizing the Bloomberg administration's argument that black and Hispanic neighborhoods stood to benefit most from the ban, since those communities have the highest rates of obesity, the NAACP argued, "At its worst, the ban arbitrarily discriminates against citizens and small-business owners in African-American and Hispanic communities."

There are cash-strapped governments, and there are broke governments. And then there's Zimbabwe, which, after paying last week's government salaries, has just $217 in the bank. No, we didn't forget any zeroes to the end of that figure. Zimbabwe, the country that's home to some of the world's largest plutonium and diamond reserves, is literally as rich as a 14-year-old girl after a really good birthday party.

What's intersting to me about Obam's comment is that, with the exception of his first sentence, his references to shooting only refers to others. Replying to the question about whether he ever fired a gun he says "Yes, in fact, up at Camp David we do skeet shooting all the time." Watch the clip.

Yet as small enterprises approach 50 employees (or retreat back below that number), look for a significant number of them to concentrate on growing in revenues without ever again growing in employees. The result can be a wave of entrepreneurship, new company creation, business growth and economic freedom. Not a bad result when you consider that it will be spurred by the government's bid to keep America's businesses under its thumb.

Private enterprise has the ability to adapt faster than government has the ability to control. Until the guns come out.

They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain't, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living. People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an Education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around. The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids. $500 sneakers for what? And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics. I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2?Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had apistol? And where is the father? Or who is his father? People putting their clothes on backward: Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong? People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something? Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from?? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa ..... I say this all of the time. It would be like white people saying they are European-American. That is totally stupid. I was born here, and so were my parents and grand parents and, very likely my great grandparents. I don't have any connection to Africa, no more than white Americans have to Germany , Scotland , England , Ireland , or the Netherlands . The same applies to 99 percent of all the black Americans as regards to Africa . So stop, already! ! ! With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap ......... And all of them are in jail. Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now. We have millionaire football players who cannot read. We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We, as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard..We cannot blame the white people any longer.'

Monday, January 28, 2013

Adil Rashid, 18, claimed he was not aware that it was illegal for him to have sex with the girl because his education left him ignorant of British law.

Yesterday Judge Michael Stokes handed Rashid a suspended sentence, saying: 'Although chronologically 18, it is quite clear from the reports that you are very naive and immature when it comes to sexual matters.'

Part of the reason this is happening is peer pressure. In our currently media environment -- where the media sees Obama as a WMD against the GOP and traditional American culture, the message has been sent that nothing should be done that might damage the president politically. In short, The Narrative must be: Obama does everything right, those who oppose him do everything wrong.

"A disaster that is spreading throughout North Africa and even into Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Obama foreign policy is one American disaster after another. After winning the war in Iraq, Team Obama has, in effect, handed that unhappy country over to the Iranians. South America would be well on its way to being a client of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, if it were not for the benevolent intervention of cancer. Team Obama decided to arm the most violent drug gangs in Mexico with American guns, a move designed to create the political climate for more gun control here in the US. Termed “Fast and Furious” the program has no other reasonable purpose.

But back the Middle East, Team Obama managed to destabilize both Egypt and Libya, turning the former over to the Islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood and the latter into a failed state awash with weapons.

The events in Algeria also bring up, yet again, the consequences of the bizarre US and European policies in North Africa. Our overthrow of Qaddafi, at the behest of the EU, and our support for the overthrow of Mubarak have produced a disaster that is spreading throughout North Africa and even into Sub-Saharan Africa. The virus of Berserker Islam is spreading throughout the region. The once-effective counters to it, the unpleasant Mubarak and Muammar "Margarita of the Magreb" Qaddafi, are now gone. Our policy of seeking out defeat and throwing away victory is bearing fruit.

Welcome to Obama's world. Can't wait for the next four years.

Some people are wondering if the Obama policies are deliberately destructive or simply misguided. In my opinion that may be like asking if Hitler meant to turn Germany into a flaming ruin or if that was simply the byproduct of his policies.

But The American Thinker if not part of the "media." So here's Matt Patterson in 2011...

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions. He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as legislator.

And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president?

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal:

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass.

Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass -- held to a lower standard -- because of the color of his skin. Podhoretz continues:

And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon -- affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin -- that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is. And that is what America did to Obama.

True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?

In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people -- conservatives included -- ought now to be deeply embarrassed. The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth -- it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years.

And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office.

But hey, at least we got to feel good about ourselves for a little while. And really, isn't that all that matters these days?

You can be a mental mediocrity, yet still do incalculable damage. The twentieth century is riddled with mediocre thinkers with ended up killing millions and destroying continents. And they were widely admired by a compliant, or cowardly, press who loves nothing more than to be in the presence of concentrated power.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Money, money, money. That's all you hear these days. Hundreds of billions, working on a trillion. Banks need a bailout. Cars need a bailout. Housing needs a bailout. You need a bailout. I need a bailout. Even President Obama needs a bailout from his bailout. Everywhere you go we're tapped out, busted, broke. Let's face it, we need money. It's time for tough choices and tougher love.

Where, oh where, shall this money be found? It is to be found, it would seem, far out on the ocean of the future dead center in the Sargasso Sea of debt. But why borrow from the future when you can simply liquidate under-performing assets in the present? Isn't it better to turn useless stuff you've got just lying around into cash than to take on new debt? Especially if a lot of the new debt is going to pay off the old debt? Of course it is.

The rush to borrow from the future ignores some very tangible assets here at home that could be used to give us all, citizens and government alike, a very nice hit from the money machine.

Traveling through Florida, as I have been for some weeks, you see these underutilized assets all about you. They are everywhere, like rich, virgin topsoil ready to be planted and then harvested. What's more, harvesting these assets to put some real money into circulation does not go against the core values of the ruling Democratic majority. It merely extends them to the logical conclusion. Like the culling of the herd before birth through the use of abortion to get the nonproductive out of the way before they can consume resources, it is time our older citizens -- far past their usefulness, their productive years, but likely to consume lots of resources for decades to come -- were, quite simply, liquidated.

Yes, it's time for mom and pop and granny and grandpop to go. All 37 million of them must be transformed from codger to compost if the American dream is not to become a new-age nightmare. It's time for a government program from coast to coast to make sure that every American over the age of 65 takes one for the team -- in the form of a government approved and delivered .22 bullet in the back of the head.

Read the whole thing. Think of the advantages! I especially like this part (very creative)

A third benefit is a jobs program right here and right now. And for the disadvantaged as well.

It might take some training to teach an urban youth basic skills such as "showing up on time for work" since they have only had eight to twelve years of expensive education, but it takes none at all to have urban youth sneak up on grandpa and "bust a cap in his skanky ass." This new class of SSa worker allows us to put jobs, paying jobs, that the worker already knows how to do on the street tomorrow. "A hit tomorrow = a pay check Friday" should be the new slogan of the Obama Works Administration (OWA!).

“In this bill we will nullify anything the president does that smacks of legislation,” Rand said Wednesday on Fox’s “Hannity,” referencing his legislation that is slated to be introduced in Congress next week. “And there are several of the executive orders that appear as if he’s writing new law. That cannot happen.”

The fellow travellers in the press and academia disparage the backlash.

Some critics retaliated by posting reporters' and editors' addresses and other personal information online.

Howard Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, called the critics' response childish and petulant.
'It doesn't move the issue of gun control to the level of intelligent public discussion,' he said. 'Instead, it transforms what should be a rational public debate on a contentious issue into ugly gutter fighting.'

On the contrary Howie, this is part of what ordinary people call the "public debate." What the Left calls a public debate is them lecturing the rest of us. I would add that telling criminals where to go to steal guns is pretty ugly gutter fighting.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Gun grabbers make me nervous.

I’m a peaceful, law abiding citizen. I’ve never so much as thrown a punch in a fist fight. Don’t have temper tantrums, not much of a sports fan. Never played football, baseball soccer, or hockey. Batted a few tennis balls around in high school, and that’s not false modesty; I considered it a great accomplishment if when I got the ball over the net. As a sportsman, I was a great reader.

But I loved to shoot. I practiced marksmanship in my high school indoor range with the school’s .22 rifles. I saved up and got one of my own, a Marlin lever action .22 that I would take out in the fields and woods behind my house to plink away at cans, squirrels and the occasional crow. In college I got a deer rifle and went hunting in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, getting up in the dark to slog through snowy woods. It was great.

Over the years as I got older and lost my interest in hunting, I still kept my guns and even added a few handguns. Those were both for sport and for personal protection. Today I’m a senior citizen and less physically able to protect myself than ever. The ability to defend myself with a gun - in an extremity - is important to me. I have as much respect for the police as the next man, but the policemen always seem to be drawing a chalk outline around the victim rather than stopping the criminal in the act. The report that it took police 20 minutes to respond to the call for help from the Sandy Hook School should be engraved in the heads of everyone who thinks that the police are there to protect you from the bad guys.

But what worries me is the large number of people who want to disarm the regular American people even as the government increases its firepower. Local police have become increasingly militarized. There isn’t a metropolitan police force without a SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) Team, equipped with weapons that were once reserved for the armed forces including machine guns and armored vehicles. Meanwhile the President is raining death via missiles carried on remote control drones on people he classifies as “enemies.” And Liberals are fine with that. If they got their wish American civilians would be totally disarmed and the only guns would be in the hands of the government. Which, by the way, was the spark that actually began the American revolution against Britain.

And why do Liberals want the American people disarmed? Well, first, a disarmed people are much easier to control. It was a government bureaucrat in the Obama administration who explained his strategy for getting compliance was based on a Roman practice when they went a-conquering. As he explained it, the Romans would enter a town and crucify the first five people they met, as an object lesson, making the others much easier to control.

My sister who was teen in World War 2, grew up in Holland and experienced the rise of Hitler, the invasion, and the occupation. And she’s afraid because she is seeing history repeating itself.

In a comment in the Althouse blog “pastafarian” said:

“You know why we've never had a genocidal dictatorship here in the US? A well-armed citizenry. We're not morally or intellectually superior to the Germans, who produced Beethoven, Bach, Einstein, Bohr, and Kepler. There's only one thing preventing an American Hitler from springing up some day; and it happens to be the one thing Obama and his supporters would most like to be rid of.”

And here is the kind of Liberal (from the Wall Street Journal) who is not only grossly misinformed but who attributes evil motives to those who want to protect themselves ... and protect the Republic.

Ha, ha, ha, ha! Since the gun ban expired more than half of all mass murders in history have happened. The gun manufacturers have made billions off of ignorant people blinded by brainwashing pro gun propaganda that has nothing to do with common sense or reality. Right wing fools are so easily led and exploited, it kills more Americans than every other country with strict regulations and makes a few gun makers rich!

For some reason, the Left believes that it's possible to create a "new man." But there is no such thing. Americans are not a new race, a totally different breed. We are people who came here from all around the world; from countries whose people produced dictators and moral monsters, who oppressed their own people and murdered their opponents by the millions. There can be no better illustration than the fact that the culture in the Middle East has not evolved since the seventh century, despite the fact that "man" has already set foot on the moon. Yet for some reason some people believe that America is immune from dictatorship or the imposition of a tyrannical government. Or is it too cynical to think that some would really like to be the ones holding the whip if a tyranny is ever established here?

The Left tells us: "Nobody is going to take away your freedom. You're being paranoid!" Golda Meir told Henry Kissinger that "even paranoids have enemies." Meanwhile the restrictions being proposed on gun ownership have been tried and found ineffective before. So stop doing things that don't work, stop making us paranoid, stop the process of disarming the American people so that if the Left's "Great Satan" George Bush III is elected President we won't be turned into a dictatorship because there will be lots of guns in civilian hands.

Journalists have always been left-leaning as a group and overwhelmingly always vote Democrat. But even when Journolist-ing, though they were using unethical tactics to manipulate an election, they could at least rationalize it by the notion that they were opposing those currently in power, i.e. a truly “adversarial” press. Now that their guy is entrenched in power, they no longer have that fig leaf.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” a deep-voiced narrator asks. “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.”

The video takes issue with Obama’s comments in a recent interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” in which the president voiced uncertainty about the NRA’s proposal to put armed security guards in schools nationwide.

“I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools,” Obama said. “And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem.”

A majority of Americans, 55 percent, support the NRA’s armed guards proposal, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week. Those with children at home are more apt than those without to want armed guards at schools, the poll shows.

Well, if you just gave yourself and your family lifetime secret service protection - people with machine guns - why would you care if the "little people" are defenseless. In fact you would prefer that others be defenseless.

Following the recent Ontario/Canada Roundtable on Gender Equality, the below provisions have been proposed for the new Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act, the first draft of which is currently being finalized.The provisions are specifically meant to target the concerns that were expressed at the roundtable that sexbots will negatively impact the pursuit for gender equality and may unduly emphasize the objectification of women as sexual objects.The suggested provisions fall into the larger framework of regulating the emerging service robot industry that will be governed by the Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act and under the direction of the Ministry of Robots and Artificial Intelligence, to be established in Ontario and other Canadian provinces and territories at the end of next year.

Monday, January 14, 2013

The David Gregory Rule in the Senate

David Gregory broke the law when he possessed and showed a magazine for a weapon on television in his Washington DC studio. DC forbids anyone in its jurisdiction from having a magazine capable of holding 30 bullets. David Gregory knew this but he did it anyway. And the Washington DC attorney whose job it is to prosecute David Gregory Irvin Nathan, a friend of the Gregorys, gave him a free pass.

Hence the David Gregory rule which states that if you are Liberal, powerful and influential in Washington DC you can commit the crimes that get the Little People arrested, prosecuted and thrown in jail.

Like the feckless DC Prosecutor, Irvin Nathan, there is no one who’s going to arrest Harry Reid for failing in his legal duty.

The media is, of course, delighted that Gregory skated. He’s one of theirs and he committed his crime in the cause of disarming the American people, a cause to which they are firmly committed. And while we have heard some snark on the Right, we have heard less than nothing from the MSM about the Senate’s failure to act in accordance with the law.

The American people are becoming used to seeing the rich and well-connected flout the law. Fast & Furious led to hundreds of deaths but not one criminal indictment. Democrat fat cat Jon Corzine illegally “lost” his customers roughly a billion dollars and he’s still bundling money for Obama. David Gregory waves an illegal large capacity magazine in front of the nation’s TV sets and gets not so much as wrist slap; instead he’s rewarded with an exclusive TV interview with the President. Harry Reid flouts the plain letter of the law at a time of severe economic stress and record setting budget deficits and not so much as a peep is heard from the prostitutes in the press. This may be a good time to ask: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders?

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Where is the US economy headed? Here's Peter Schiff's opinion..

Here’s a clip of a bunch of people laughing at Peter Schiff in 2006 and 2007 when he predicted that the housing bubble was about to burst, financial stocks were going to take a tumble, and we were headed into a recession:

"Peter Schiff says the Fed's bubble machine is destroying the American economy and he is right. Zero interest rates and QE are crushing savers, rewarding speculators and enabling the Washington politicians to issue endless debt. Every concerned citizen should read this."-- David Stockman; Former OMB director under President Ronald Reagan

Gun Free Zones are supposed to protect our children, and some politicians wish to strip us of our right to keep and bear arms. Those same politicians and their families are currently under the protection of armed Secret Service agents. If Gun Free Zones are sufficient protection for our children, then Gun Free Zones should be good enough for politicians.

It's something the Right and Left can agree on. Who can possible be opposed to this?

The Second Amendment is Obsolete, some say. The idea that the United States could ever turn tyrannical is pure paranoia, some say.

Well, let's look at that.

Rounding up people and sending them to concentration camps (whether called "reservations" or "relocation centers"). Check. (Treatment of Native Americans. Japanese-American "Relocation Centers" during World War II).

Illegal medical experiments involving infecting people with diseases, not treating them, and observing the effects done on people without their knowledge or consent. Check. (Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment--and particularly interesting how that was "explained" to the victims as they were getting free health care from the US Government.)

Police believe the criminal who was canvassing a neighborhood in the 2500 block of Wichita near Hermann Park had no idea what he was in for when he picked his target.

The victim in this case had just walked back to his car from a bar around the corner.

Kevin Dorsey says he hadn’t even closed his car door Thursday night when a man wearing all black and a ski mask put a gun to his chest. The man took Dorsey’s wallet, cell phone and car keys.

After he was robbed, Dorsey began running down the street and says two men in a Mercedes asked him what had happened.

Dorsey told them and they not only caught up with the suspect, but they started shooting at him.

The suspect fired back. In the end, the two witnesses turned vigilantes won and took down the bad guy.

“I don’t believe in guns,” said Dorsey. “I don’t own a gun. I’m totally at the mercy of my saviors. They obviously sent two angels to help me. These people protected me when I couldn’t protect myself.”

After the robber had been shot, police say he jumped over a fence and was attacked by a German Shepherd. That attack prevented him from getting away.

The group, named Citadel, intends to purchase 2,000 to 3,000 acres for the project in western Idaho. The community will comprise of 3,500 to 7,000 families of patriotic Americans who "voluntarily choose to live together in accordance with Thomas Jefferson's ideal of Rightful Liberty."

According to the Citadel website, Rightful Liberty means that "neighbors keep their noses out of other neighbors' business, that neighbors live and let live."

Crowds at gun stores

I went to two gun stores today just to see for myself if the stories I heard about people piling into stores to buy guns are true. They are. One store was in Norfolk and one in Virginia Beach. Both were crowded, with a very large large number of couples, as well as single men and women. The wait for a chance to get into the store shooting ranges was anywhere from 45 minutes to several hours.

And parking? The shop in Norfolk's lot was filled and new customers had to park a block or more away in the street. The shop in Virginia Beach hired three extra people in bright orange vests to direct traffic to an overflow lot.

One of the female clerks said she was concerned that the Obama administration would shut down her business. That's the fear that is driving people to gun stores in record numbers.

It's also the reason that there will not be any meaningful change in the gun laws unless Obama declares martial law. The hundreds of ordinary men and women crowding her store and others like it across the country make it clear that the clerk at the gun store should not have to worry.

The biggest impact of the Obama/Media effort to demonize gun owners is that there will be lots more guns in the hands of the American people, and they will be much better armed.

What would you rather have facing a crazed killer in your school, a small, unarmed female teacher or an armed janitor? If you have to think about that you are either Piers Morgan or a member of the editorial board of the Virginian Pilot.

MONTPELIER, Ohio — As the mother of three children in Montpelier Exempted Village Schools, Teresa Hickman calls the district’s plan to arm the custodial staff with guns an effective way to prevent incidents like the shootings in Newtown, Conn.

US Q4 GDP: From 2.5% To Sub 1% in Under Six Months

Below is a summary of the Wall Street penguins all of whom had no choice but to revise their Q4 GDPs far lower.•Goldman Sachs: 1.8% to 1.3%•JPM: 1.5% to 0.8%•RBS: 1.5% to 0.7% •Nomura: 2% to 1.3%•Last, and least, Deutche Bank's Joe Lavorgna: unchanged at 1.3%Look forward to hope being forced to surge even more to offset for this cut by nearly 50% ot the consensus Q4 GDP estimate of 1.5% prior to today. And while we wait for Bloomberg to compile today's massive downward revision to economic growth, this is how Q4 GDP tracking estimates looked like in the past 6 months before today's downward revision which will take the consensus line to 1% or under.

Not even a slap on the wrist."Prosecutorial Discretion"Letter to Gregory's lawyer: tell your client of our "deep concern."Let's call it the David Gregory exemption.David Gregory is better than you.Not guilty by virtue of importance.Some animals more equal than others.Somewhere, John “There are Two Americas” Edwards is smiling.Laws are for the Little People.America's “nomenklatura.”This teaches us all a valuable lesson – they have power, you don’t.

So there are indeed two law systems in the United States–one for the political elite, corporate donors, and the state-run press, and another for everyone else.

It' s pure coincidence, I'm sure that David Gregory's wife, superlawyer Beth Wilkinson, is a friend of DC Attorney General Irvin Nathan. Here's a picture of the two at a swank DC gathering.

What’s important is that the connection reinforcesproves sets in stone public perception, as Emily Miller put it, of one law for “the rich and powerful and one for everyone else.”James Brinkley didn’t participate in mock trials with Irvin Nathan at the Washington, D.C. Shakespeare Theater. He participated in a real trial in court against Nathan’s office, as told by Miller several days ago, If you’re not David Gregory …:

Despite the evidence Mr. Brinkley had been legally transporting the gun, his attorney Richard Gardiner said the D.C. Office of the Attorney General “wouldn’t drop it.” …. Mr. Brinkley refused to take a plea bargain and admit guilt, so the matter went to trial Dec. 4. The judge sided with Mr. Brinkley, saying he had met the burden of proof that he was legally transporting.

The question is, who is more contemptible: David Gregory or Irving Nathan?

To permit a law to be modified at discretion, is to leave the community without law. ... He that is thus governed lives not by law, but by opinion; not by a certain rule, to which he can apply his intention before he acts, but by an uncertain and variable opinion, which he can never know but after he has committed the act, on which that opinion shall be passed. He lives by a law, if a law it be, which he can never know before he has offended it.

"Democrat operatives with bylines" lays off supporting staff after the election's over.

The Times underwent a round of buyouts and layoffs in 2009, but the possible departure of high-level Times staffers signals just how dire the current state of news media is.

“In today’s news environment, nobody’s job is safe. Not mine. Not yours. Not Marcus Brauchli’s, who was recently forced out at the Washington Post, which is reason enough for me to reiterate my maxim that everybody in our business should always be looking for their next job,” said Jack Shafer, the Reuters media critic who was fired from Slate last year. “I trust that the great people forced out at the Times will soon get the good jobs they deserve.”

Speaking of whistling past the graveyard!

...no one believes this round will be the last… Everyone believes more cuts will come eventually. That’s partly why this round stings so much.”

Time Warner's Time Inc. will lay off up to 700 staffers out of just under 8,000 total as the publisher's new chief struggles to transform famous titles and massive market share into a digital profit center.

TIME? Is that even published any more? Do you know anyone who reads TIME?

Friday, January 11, 2013

One of the worst flu seasons in a decade is putting further strains on an already sluggish U.S. economy as companies get slammed with increased health care costs and lower productivity from widespread worker absences.

Obama's cheerleaders in the press have given us all sorts of reasons why the end of the recession, back in 2009, four years ago, wasn't followed by a strong recovery like other post-recession bounce-backs.

Having used every excuse in the book:

George W. Bush,

Tax breaks,

Arab Spring,

Japanese earthquake,

Globalization,

George W. Bush,

Automation technologies,

Eurozone crisis,

Republican House,

ATM usage,

George W. Bush,

The Weather,

Bad luck,

Super PAC ad spending ,

Lack of stimulus money,

George W. Bush,

The Tea Party,

Unmanned airport ticket kiosks,

Oil speculators,

Underestimation of economic crisis,

George W. Bush,

Businesses not expanding,

Americans being soft and lazy,

Fox News,

Energy companies not getting behind…algae,

And now ... THE FLU!

Keep one thing firmly in mind as you see the press spin and whirl for your entertainment. Whatever happens, if it's bad .... IT'S NOT OBAMA'S FAULT.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Hipness is a tool designed to justify enjoying the riches and leisure produced by the American brand of Western market capitalism by poking fun at it, teasing it some, dressing it up a bit to suggest ambivalence over its benefits without ever seriously either understanding their source or, much less, losing them. We feel hip at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, but not so much in the organic section of Safeway.

On the hipness of academia:

A Martian would see the modern university as an elitist enclave, where life-long tenured professors make lots of money overseen by hordes of even better-paid administrators, that together cause tuition for cash-strapped and indebted students to rise faster than the rate of inflation without any promises that their eventual certifications will result in commensurate good jobs. A non-Martian would instead appreciate the hip nexus of diversity, eco-caring, and gender-neutral inclusivity. ... Hip decries school choice and vouchers, but means Sidwell Friends is under armed guards for your own progenies.

On corporate hipsters:

Would Google have had more trouble for all its outsourcing and overseas tax avoidance had it been named American Internet, Inc., or if its founders had grown up together as good ol’ boys in Mobile, Alabama, who still had a nagging propensity for putting patriotic slogans under the Google logo when the browser pops up each morning? Imagine waking and hitting the American Internet, Inc. logo — and then reading “Live free or die” before your search. (How odd that liberals — e.g., “the medium is the message” — always lectured us about advertising-driven false demand, and then became past masters of deceptive branding.)...

If the executives of Solyndra had been coal-company CEOs, they would now be in deep trouble for squandering public funds obtained through rank cronyism.

Or names:

So: hip is often as easy as changing one’s name. Had Mitt Romney only reminded us of his family’s Mexican ancestry and ran as Zarpa Romneo, and against Barry Dunham.

On Obama:

Barack Obama baffles his detractors. How can one who golfs so frequently, or who vacations in only the most tony resorts, keep haranguing the nation about the transgressions of the one percent? When he sees them stroll by on Martha’s Vineyard, does he jump up and shout out at their mansions: “You didn’t build that!”?

How did corpse-man not win the NPR vitriol that nu-cu-lar had in the past?

How could Obama in 2006 vote against raising the debt ceiling, in 2008 call Bush unpatriotic for deficit spending, upon entering office promise to halve the deficit by the end of his first term, and then oversee some $5 trillion in new borrowing? Hip: borrowing became “stimulus”; entitlements, “investments”; and paying it all back became “paying your fair share.” In Obama’s case, he is not just black, but black with an exotic name and a liberal ideology, unlike a Clarence Thomas, who is most unhip — being right-wing, not of mixed race, with an ordinary American name (Clarence?), veteran of the prejudices of the pre-Civil Rights south. Could not Thomas shorten his name to just the single Tomré? Or perhaps go the Van Jones made-up route — Van Thomas?

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked.

The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

Tuesday, January 08, 2013

One of the central weaknesses of radicalism is that radicals seem to lose track of the causes and foundations of the things even they value. They don’t understand that peace is always and everywhere the end result of superior firepower, improved health the result of greater wealth, wealth the result of hardheaded and often greedy business dealing, and liberty deeply linked to a specific concept of man’s relationship to God. They never consider that it may at least be questionable whether the cornerstone can be removed without the structure toppling over.

Conversely, one of the central weaknesses of conservatism is that conservatives see all too clearly how every good thing we have is linked to everything else. They can trace in a moment how any change in the system might lead to disaster. Expand the definition of marriage and civilization falls. Raise taxes and end up in chains. Allow women to vote and government will become an all-embracing over-protective mother state infantilizing the population. Okay, maybe that last one’s true, but you see what I’m getting at.

Several Tennessee lawmakers say they have drafted legislation that would encourage school districts to place at least one armed police officer in every school and would allow teachers who have undergone special training to bring their personal handguns into schools.

And at least one city in Middle Tennessee is considering paying for teachers to take a gun training course.

With all the focus on guns and magazines, we have a witness that the Sandy Hook shooter was taking drugs.

Via WND:

But where, I’d like to ask my colleagues in the media, is the reporting about the psychiatric medications the perpetrator – who had been under treatment for mental-health problems – may have been taking? After all, Mark and Louise Tambascio, family friends of the shooter and his mother, were interviewed on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” during which Louise Tambascio told correspondent Scott Pelley: “I know he was on medication and everything, but she homeschooled him at home cause he couldn’t deal with the school classes sometimes, so she just homeschooled Adam at home. And that was her life.” And here, Tambascio tells ABC News, “I knew he was on medication, but that’s all I know.”

It has been more than three weeks since the shooting. We know all about the guns he used, but what “medication” may he have used? (One brief mini-hoax emerged when the New York Daily News published a story claiming the shooter, according to his uncle, had been on the controversial antipsychotic drug Fanapt. That story was quickly withdrawn after the “uncle” turned out to be a fraudster with no relation to the murderer.)

So, what is the truth? Where is the journalistic curiosity? Where is the follow-up? Where is the police report, the medical examiner’s report, the interviews with his doctor and others?

Do you think that some drugs used on people with psychological problems may have something to do with this crime? This does not fit the MSM mold so it's an angle that won't be explored.

Hard to say the intruder would have done anything. He might have just left. But luckily gun people fire first and ask questions later.

And

larissalarie on Jan 6, 2013 at 2:01 PM What a moron. The guy was obviously casing the neighborhood to see what house was empty to rob. If she'd answered the door or otherwise made it known the house was occupied the guy woulda moved on, he obviously wasn't an armed intruder looking for a confrontation. She put her children in danger needlessly, she's not a hero at all.

And

RhondaVeggie on Jan 6, 2013 at 4:26 PM Or she could have just looked to see who was at the door without waiting for him to decide nobody was home and it was safe to break in.